and sorrow, and anger against her sister for saying – well, implying – that she wasn’t good enough to be with that little girl she loved more than anyone in the world… You know what I figured out, Om? If a person has any sort of magic gift, it gets more powerful the more strongly the person’s feeling. Like her son, Frederick, putting magic into the cupboard because he was so angry about plastic ruining his toy business.”
“Yeah, Dad. I read it, you know.”
“Om, please, don’t be impatient. Let me work my way through this. You had days, maybe weeks, to read the Account and digest it. I had it all in one go and it’s fairly knocked me sideways. I didn’t sleep a single wink last night.”
“Sorry – I didn’t mean—”
“No, it’s okay, it’s okay. Give me a sec, and I’ll cut to the chase.” But his head was down, he was still turning the pages of the notebook. “It’s just, I’m so utterly gobsmacked about Jessica Charlotte and her story, I’ve half-forgotten about Little Bull…” He looked up at Omri. “But yes, the key. It came to me. Now listen. If we could find a figure, a plastic toy, that might be Jessica Charlotte – I know it’d be difficult, but there can’t be that many figures that look like her – if we could… and if we could bring her forward in time, to us, we might ask her to copy the car key for us. She could make it magic, the way she did the other.”
Omri stared at him, his brain racing. Of course! A slow, face-filling grin spread over his features, and he saw an answering look of incredulous delight dawn on his father’s face.
“Don’t tell me you’ve got one!”
“Yes! We’ve already brought her once—”
“What!”
“Shhh! I haven’t had a chance to tell you everything. I was concentrating on Little Bull…”
“You brought her! You’ve met Jessica Charlotte!”
For answer, Omri dived under the bed and got out another of his treasures – an old cashbox, black and silver, the paint wearing off, a blob of red sealing-wax still blocking the slot. He opened it cautiously. His father was so eager he was trembling. Omri carefully took out the little woman-shape in the red dress with the big plumed hat, the size of his finger. His father took it from him as reverently as if it were a holy relic.
“This is her?” he whispered wonderingly.
“Yes.”
“Where did you get it?”
“It was in here, in the cashbox that I found with the Account, buried in the old thatched roof. The magic key opened it. She was fast asleep, but later I – well, me and Patrick—”
“Patrick and I—”
“Yeah, well, she woke up, and we decided… I mean it was just before she was going to steal her sister’s earrings, you know, the night she made the key. And I wanted to change her mind and get her not to steal them…”
His father’s face sagged suddenly with horror. “My God, Omri! You didn’t, did you?”
“No. Patrick said not to. Because if I had, it would have changed history. Everything that came from stealing the earrings – things linked to other things, like a chain – wouldn’t have happened, and I – I might never have been born.”
His father swallowed hard. His face had gone very pale. “I wonder if we ought to be meddling with this,” he said at last. “I wonder if we ought not to just – just put the key, and the cupboard, and the cashbox, and the Account, the plastic figures and everything else, safely away somewhere and – and just forget it.”
“No, Dad! It’s no use. I tried that. I did try – you know I did – I put the cupboard and key in the bank and I swore I wouldn’t take them out and mess about with the magic any more, but – but you can’t not, somehow. I couldn’t, anyway. It – when I read the Account, I – I just felt the magic calling me.”
His father was gazing at him with a very strange, troubled expression. “Omri. You don’t suppose—”
“What?”
“Well… don’t be scared. But Frederick obviously inherited some part of Jessie’s ‘gift’, or he couldn’t have put magic into the cupboard he made. I just wondered if that – magic power – if… After all, they were your blood relatives. Perhaps it’s something that can be – passed on.”
There was a long silence. They stared into each other’s eyes.
“Wouldn’t…” Omri found he had to clear his throat. “Wouldn’t – Mum have had some of it?”
His father frowned and went to the window. It was framed by deep eaves of thatch. The sun was just coming up over the hill on the horizon, the one that had on its top a strange little circle of trees, like a peacock’s crown.
“I suppose Mum never told you about the time she saw a ghost.”
Omri jumped. “A ghost!”
“Yes. She told me about it ages ago. I didn’t believe her. Of course. I didn’t believe in anything unprovable in those days.”
“Whose ghost did she see?”
“Well, that’s one of the things I was thinking about, lying awake last night.” He looked down at the little woman-shape in his hand. “I only have her description to go on, and I only heard the story once. Years ago, before we were married. She told it to me when I was saying I didn’t believe in anything supernatural, including an afterlife. And she disagreed, and we were sort of quarrelling. She told me this story, to prove me wrong. And I…” He paused, and swallowed, “I laughed.”
“Tell me!”
“She said she was visiting her mother’s grave – Lottie, who’d died in the bombing of London, when your mum was still a baby. Lottie was buried in the same grave as her father, Matthew, in Clapham Cemetery, near where she was born, where her mother still lived. Jessica Charlotte’s sister.”
“Maria.”
His father nodded. “Yes. Maria, who brought your mother up. She was an old lady by then, in her eighties, but she went every week to the cemetery to put flowers on Lottie’s grave. Mum didn’t often go because she was busy with her own life by then, she was a student, but that day Maria wasn’t well and Mum felt she had to drive her to Clapham instead of letting her go by herself on the bus. Mum said she felt guilty about not taking her gran more often but you know, if you don’t even remember the dead person, it’s hard to visit the graveyard regularly.
“Anyway, they got there, and bought some flowers at the gates, and the old lady filled a plastic bottle with water from a tap. Mum carried the things and held her gran’s arm, and they walked to the grave. And then Mum gave the flowers to her gran, who knelt down by the grave. She was – you know – taking out last week’s flowers and arranging the new ones in the vase with the fresh water, and suddenly Mum saw someone standing beside her.”
Omri sat rigid. He felt as if ice-water were trickling down his spine. He could see it in his mind’s eye. He saw the whole scene as if it were being enacted in front of him. He even saw who his mum had seen, before his father went on:
“She could see her clearly. A woman in an old-fashioned long dress with her hair piled up on her head. There was a strong breeze blowing, but the woman’s hair didn’t stir. She was looking straight at Mum.”
Omri wanted to ask his dad to go on, but he felt frozen, frozen in the scene. He hardly needed to ask. He saw.
The woman was Jessica Charlotte.
She took a step forward, nearer to the grave, looking all the time at the young girl standing on the other side of it. She put her hand